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The truth was, I didn’t have a tremendous amount of hope for what I would find when I got there. It was a rather old vineyard. It had been barely kept alive over the years by the older generation of the King family. Now as I understood it, there was a gaggle of brothers, the grandsons of the previous owners, running it.
And by running it I meant doing everything they could to scrape it up off the ground and turn it into something potentially viable. They’d inherited old, neglected fields and vines, crumbling, outdated buildings, and storage rooms full of wine crafted many years before and potentially forgotten about. Which was where the bottle beside me came from, inevitably. I fully understood the concept of aging wine, but there was a pretty distinct difference between a well-aged bottle and someone having bottles stuffed in a storage room somewhere and not knowing what to do with them as the vineyard failed around them.
According to the file, the brothers were committed to a massive reimagining and renovation of the entire operation. They had already managed to do some of it, including reopening the restaurant on-site, but there was still a tremendous amount left to be done.
I didn’t really see how it would be possible for them to pull off the redo they had planned. The space was just too far gone. Running a successful vineyard required a massive amount of time, dedication, and know-how, not to mention money. The older generation of owners didn’t keep up with it as they should have, and I had the lingering suspicion there were just too many things wrong to be effectively addressed.
My plan was to head out Sunday night so I could get to the bed-and-breakfast where I’d be staying during my time at the vineyard and settle in. Then I would be rested and refreshed to show up at the King Vineyard on Monday and see just how accurate my inclinations about the place really were. I’d go over the grapes, see what the brothers had been up to, and make my conclusions.
In every way I could be, I was ready to go. My bag was packed with the exception of my day-to-day toiletries. I had already dropped my dog off with the sitter for the week. My mail was on hold, my lights timed to be turned on and off randomly, and my newspaper digital, so I didn’t really have to do anything with that.
I had traveling for work down to a science. I’d done this exact trip for other vineyards all over California and even out so far as Chicago a few times. I knew what I was doing. That wasn’t the issue. There was just something about this one vineyard that was getting to me. Which, of course, was completely ridiculous. I didn’t know anything more about this vineyard than I knew about all the other ones I’d ever gone to. All I had were photos and a brief overview. I’d never been there or met anyone involved with it.
But every time I thought about going out there, I felt a knot forming in my stomach. Maybe it was just because the story behind it was so sad.
I shook off the feeling and reached for my phone to call Jasmine. My sister and I did a weekly check-in to keep up with each other. It had been just the two of us for so long, and even though we didn’t live near each other anymore, it was important to me for us to stay close.
I had raised Jasmine from the time she was fifteen. That was when a car accident took both of our parents. There was no way I was going to let her be put into foster care or sent off to one of the obscure relatives the lawyers tracked down. We’d never met them, and just the thought of her having to go live with them for the next three years until she turned eighteen was too much for me to bear. We had already lost our mother and father. We couldn’t lose each other too.
So, I did what I had to do. I rearranged my life so I could take care of her. I was only twenty-two years old at the time, but just like that, I became the mother of a teenager. It didn’t matter to me how much my life changed or what I needed to do. All that mattered was making sure Jasmine had the life she wanted.
I loved my baby sister more than I could ever describe. It was what made me work as hard as I possibly could so I could put her through the last three years at her prestigious arts high school. Ballet had always been her dream. From the time she was big enough to stand up, she had been dancing. Anyone who ever encountered her could see her grace and her beauty.
